Former Ottawa journalist Jake Scott is bored and lonely, having lost his wife to illness, his job to technology and his daughter to a boyfriend in another city. All that keeps him going is a weekly breakfast gathering with friends and a temperamental overweight cat named Oliver. Things change when one of the breakfast attendees, a beautiful and tenacious homicide detective with a troubled teenage daughter, has an idea for a book for Jake. When he takes her advice and researches a convicted murderer’s case, he finds out something is terribly wrong. Could one of the breakfast group be hiding a secret deadly enough to commit murder? Jake follows leads that take him on a rollercoaster ride of clues, tossing him from one potential perpetrator to another, all while his attraction for the detective grows. The story culminates in a terrifying ordeal on the coldest night of the year.